BSA Sidecover

I made a sidecover for the BSA yesterday. Two reasons for it. First I wanted to make something now that I've got most of the woodworking stuff set up. Second, I wanted to try my hand a making a die for one-off/low volume parts. 

The finished part came out looking roughly like I had envisioned it. There were a couple of wavy spots - part of that as a result of my annealing the part prior to forming and partly due to the top die I made.

Here's what it looks like after some planishing to take out the waviness and to crown the boundary around the inset part. It doesn't look all that bad on the bike. It doesn't go very well with the air cleaner that's stuck on there currently but might not look too bad with a velocity stack. I'll weld the corners up, planish it a bit more and then see how it looks on the bike. It's not what Surly was looking for I'm sure, but it was surprisingly easy to make. Not easy enough to make any money trying to do this but I'm not interested in working on anyone else's projects anyway.

Anyway, I learned a few things making this one. I've done enough of this kind of stuff now that I've got a pretty good idea of what I'm doing but not good enough to be able to work quickly and confidently. All goes back to the 10,000 hour thing I suppose. I'd like to think that after Surly comes up with his final design that I can actually make it. Won't be good if I can't.